Database Marketing

Summing It All Up

2018 soon will be a year that was and in the last days, as it tiptoes out, our experts spent time and effort to sum it all up for your marketing team.

Myth Busters

One of the most important topics addressed when in lead generation marketing strategies. We didn’t list an exhaustive list but important to keep in mind are: Lead Generation Can’t be Tracked; Qualifying Leads Don’t Matter; Quality Landing Pages are a Waster of Time; Social Media No More Effective in Lead Generation; Webinars are a Waste of Time for Lead Generation; Loads of Own Success Stories Needed.

Social Media

While dealing with social media strategies, we did stress on different approaches for various platforms but the underlying factors of the strategy were: Encouraging feedback and comments; listening to complaints – if any and taking remedial measures in the shortest possible time; geographical targeting; demographical fishing for enhanced reach; using small budget ads where possible and gated content from experts to make your brand as the leader of the pack.

Real World

In the real world, in addition to the age-old methods of emails, cold calling and such, some unorthodox methods were highlighted. The experts have also recommended using solution highlighted languages – in all dealings – at all stages; planning and delivering with optimized solutions; never giving up easily and changing the strategy midway; making sure to reach back in the least possible time to prospects’ asking for a clarification or just more information.

Virtual Domain

In the virtual world, there are simple but also proven approaches to rise above the clutter of competition. A highly professional home page, different landing pages for popup offers or Call To Action (CTA) options; webinars and follow-up with raised questions and queries; expert commentaries on subjects of concern in your business domain; running quizzes, contests, and engagements – were just some of the pointers to note.

Trusted Funnel

Your team should keep an updated funnel by using free CRM tool and the emails from the lists provided by Infofree.com, where the business database has 95% accuracy and consumer database approximately 90% accuracy. Thus your funnel will stay healthy and focussed.

Strategy Inventory

Finally, a very important task this week is to take a thorough inventory of your toolbox and check which ones worked and which need replacement in the coming year (next week onwards). Some of your strategies haven’t yielded desired results so make a note of it and let your experts decide if those need deletion or fine-tuning. Overall, be assured that 2018 is over and you can learn and move ahead.

Jingle Bells For Customers

Yes, this is that time of the year where your team should be the Santa Clause for your prospects, customers and business associates.

Tradition The Icing

During this festive season, your targeted audience is binding with the traditions of family and also friends. If your team can find ways to be a part of that you’re a winner. Local businesses or geographical boundaries associated with your business can define what you are looking for in the virtual and real world to reach out.

Gift Wrapping Offers

You can repackage your offers as special gifts for your customers. Simple gifts matter. For example, a stationary shop owner decided to give kids some color pencils and became a darling for the customers for the coming year as kids loved and goaded their parents to revisit the shop for their requirements.

Identifying And Adopting

Your team will also come out on top if you identify the different festivities in your domain. Remember there are major and minor micro-societies in any targeted business area. It will pay to understand the various traditions. Most of the time it comes as a surprise to minorities when wished or greeted on their festive occasion. Thus forming a bond with a smile.

Personalize & Be Present

One of the most ignored aspects of lead generation is personalization on an emotional front. For many of your prospects, there is a hidden emotional part like being alone or also having suffered a loss. The causes can be any but the solution is the same. An understanding outreach from your team gets you a client from a prospect.

CRM Usage A Must

The free tool CRM provided with your Infofree.com subscription is a sure way to not let any prospect left behind as you move on. Also, the CRM will definitely play a major role as you move forward and utilize optimized details from lists, provided by Infofree.com, where the business databases, have 95% accuracy and consumer databases approximately 90% accuracy.

Prospects & Gratitude Summation for 2018

All of 2018 your team has been making efforts to post and engage with prospects. Now is the time to remember to engage with those who reacted to your postings. Before the Christmas festivities and wishing take over, its time for action with a short, concise and genuine gratitude filled thank you note. Do not send Christmas wishes or New Year greetings yet. There will be time ahead for those.

Facebook

On Facebook, a look at the activities on your page gives you a rough idea of who liked or shared or commented on your page hence they go on your list to send a personalized note. For all those who visited but never left a like or comment behind, there should be a posting of the thank you note on all your postings. Remember even those postings, with no likes or comments, were also visited and noted.

Twitter

On Twitter, it’s simpler to see the ones who liked your tweet or retweeted. Also as a business entity, make sure to thank all your followers with a thank you note for following you and wishing them well in their endeavors.

LinkedIn

Here the prospects who like, comment or sometimes share your post, get a nod of appreciation. A word of thanks can be posted specifically mentioning them. A personalized message will pop up in their inboxes so keep those short and crisp.

Network Platforms

On most of the other social media and network platforms, your team has to make sure that they take the time to thank those who have shared your articles/webinars/videos with their network. Make sure that your team makes a public display of the thank you effort instead of just doing it in a private message.

Humanize Brand

With a public display of your gratitude sentiments, you are humanizing your brand with a long-lasting impact. Your genuine message when filled with kind words will not be lost with your prospects. Thus generating a mental awareness of your brand.

Personalize Receivers

There are many options to personalize your approach. Simple is to use the name of a person, place or product to whom you are addressing your note. Behind every business, there is a human face. Your team must thank that human identity in a personalized approach to get the best results. A sure-success way is to optimize details from lists, provided by Infofree.com, where the business databases, have 95% accuracy and consumer databases approximately 90% accuracy.

Maximum Use of This Festive Marketing Month

2018 is at the exit-month: December and time to give all the year-long content a new lease of life so your marketing strategy can cap it all in these four weeks.

Working Ideas

Your best marketing ideas need an injection of fresh impetus so those can cap it all with flying colors in December. A closer look will show where your experts can improve the presentations on different platforms without changing the basics.

Social Media

Most of the new strategy changes that work best – usually will be on social media platforms. A discerning eye will show which social media approach needs a change of clothes. For example how you can make your Facebook page more attractive or engage in conversations on Twitter or post business related pictures on Pinterest.

Colorful Festive

December is the month of festivities and color is in the air. Depending on your business sector – go ahead and add color to your presentations. This is the last opportunity of 2018 so indulge but with caution.

Musical Vibes

Music appropriate for your business can bring attention to your products and solutions. Appealing music plays an excellent catalyst role to bring prospects. Sometimes a tune stays in the head and keeps prospects bringing back to you.

Caution Call

In both the above approaches of color and music, the appropriate quality and quantity need optimization with an expert overlooking the implementation otherwise the results can be disastrous. As retailers go for appropriate colors and musical tunes to attract attention, your online team can generate short, concise and soothing colors and tunes to highlight your offers on your websites and other online presence.

Thank You

Nothing will bring a more genuine feeling of appreciation in your customers, prospects and business associates than a short, concise and personalized in some way – a note Thanking them for being associated with your entrepreneurial spirit. If you are a retails business outlet or have a physical office, then do not forget to thank the cleaners, delivery people and mailmen/mailwomen, just to name a few. Your business will be helped by those invisible hands more than you can perceive in real time.

The Starting Point

With Thanksgiving and Black Friday behind us, the holiday season is gearing up for a full blast till the end of the year and ushering in a new prosperous year ahead. Starting as Cyber Monday, the time span embraced Cyber Week but for the knowledgeable new marketing expert with a discerning eye, Cyber Week is actually a start for the festive weeks to come.

Readiness Helps

Your team must fine-tune your website and not leave unattended any “404 Not Found” kind of pages popping up when your prospects are looking for you. Check out on the following basic pointers that your team must adhere to keep your website and landing pages in the best health:

1. Check Speed

Use available tools in the market (for example Google’s) to let your team run a speed test. If your team finds a lag in the load time or other discrepancies, make sure to address them as soon as possible, Remember to run the tests from more than one site.

2. Constant Vigil

Your team must have a constant monitoring system (you can also use available professional services) to check the website and other virtual platforms your business is using because a few hours of outage can cause a lot of losses and affect visitor frequency.

3. Mobile Must

One of the major factors not only with millennials, who are some of the biggest spenders on the web, but also public in general researching for a product, is mobile-friendliness of your virtual pages. All your virtual platforms including your website must be mobile friendly and open with ease and speed.

4. Buttons and Arrows

If you have buttons and arrows to click on your website, your designers must make sure that different thicknesses of fingertips are taken care of, especially when your prospects are using mobile devices.

Engage All

Your team has been working diligently but this is the time to reconnect with slow responses or those who haven’t caught on to your excellent services. Make sure to not only communicate what such prospects might have missed out on but also to reach out to all on your lists, provided by Infofree.com, where the business databases, have 95% accuracy and consumer databases approximately 90% accuracy.

Offers – CTA

Now is the time to start on the lucrative offer spree and attaching a few must act Call-to-Action (CTA) positions. Your team must focus now on incentivizing and rewarding customers for purchasing sooner rather than later. Your offers can be repackaged and re-offered under slightly different terms so no need to get a brand new offer ready all the time.

Optimization Helps

With your offers and incentives, another great idea is to optimize particular landing pages for specific offers which searching prospects can visit. Such pages help keep the concentration of the visitors on the products/solutions, they were looking for. Another great way to keep them engaged is to put a timer on the page to highlight to the visitor how time is running out on their chance to grab the deal.

Naming Works

Whatever is your offer, make sure to give it a name (for example, Cyber Week offer). As time moves, the offers can be fine-tuned and made to float again as the Year-End offer, Christmas offer and the list goes on. It’s a proven fact that the customers like to call your offer by a title when talking about it or even when ordering it.

Look Forward

Your team will do well if it puts into place a skeleton marketing campaign for the coming weeks as you move through this Cyber Week promotions. As the digital rush of the holidays picks up and you handle all the traffic online, your team will do great to keep an eye on the future weeks for advising, rejuvenating and reengaging prospects while offering continuous support and encouragement to your loyal customers.

Quick Answers

Last but not least is the prompt answering of any questions that the visitors are posing on your website or landing pages. The holiday season is a no-holiday time slot for the experts answering such queries otherwise be assured that your prospects will be going to your competitors.

Email Luck

Thanksgiving Week is here. The annual event is about not only turkey but also giving thanks for what your business has. After watching the trends and doing diligent research, our experts at Infofree.com came up with the following dos and don’ts while handling your Thanksgiving week and beyond marketing strategy:

Short Attention Span

First and foremost remember that your audience will have a short attention span when it comes to email or any other kind of online messaging. If you are in a sector that caters to this holiday then you know what to do before, during or after the event to reach out with deals and other niceties. But if you have products for other business sectors you can be very concise in word usage when.

Incredible Instant

The subject line of the email or the message has to be incredibly enticing for your reader. If you want the prospect to land in your lap during this holiday season; it’s better to avoid words like FREE, Incredible Offer, Once in a lifetime etc. which are thrown around by most. Your winning cards get the best deal by saying in straight language: What you’re offering instead of teasing like normal times.

Mobile Friendly Humor

On Thanksgiving tables when one wants to avoid listening to a monologue from an elderly relative; then checking one’s smartphone is seen as a smart way out. Your email or message, if mobile friendly, can be a savior for the person and if you can add a pinch of humor, relevant to your business sector, you are a winner.

Let Competition Lag

Most pundits in the business sectors except where there is relevance for the particular holidays, advise to shut down virtual marketing efforts. You will do great to beat the competition if you can keep your marketing machinery running but with a pragmatic approach. You never know when Lady Luck is going to smile on your business. Also, remember problems don’t respect holidays so why should you, who are offering solutions. Just make sure to fine-tune your marketing efforts more to problem-solving mode.

Automated Replies

On the holiday trail, most people set their email responders to automated modes of replying that they have limited connectivity or not checking emails till the end of the holiday season. Your team shouldn’t be fooled by such answers and be encouraged to send concise, short and solution-based email messages. Most prospects still check their emails and if you are offering something that is relevant, you are a winner.

Funnel, CRM Usage

As your team uses the lists provided by Infofree.com, where the business databases have 95% accuracy and consumer databases approximately 90% accuracy. Make sure to use their free CRM tool provided. Save the prospects for your funnel for further interactions along the way.

Black Friday

Thus following such a strategically optimized marketing plan will definitely make Black Friday a profitable experience. As your ROI (Return on Investment) will expand and your profits will soar.

Expertise Matters, Develop Credibility

The business climate in most of the sectors is getting increasingly marketing-savvy. And the prospects are getting smarter, thus making it harder and harder to impress prospective clients. Our experts at Infofree.com listed some of the ways to sharpen your marketing skills for success:

Expertise Hub

All the marketers in your business sector are aiming to grab the attention of the prospects. If you can, develop your webpage or even an FAQ landing page into an expertise hub. You will be way ahead of any competition. Your experts can showcase their expertise there and develop it into an “experts available for answers to queries” also.

Credibility

With your experts developing an expertise hub, the quality and timing of answers will establish your credibility in the market. An established credibility ensures an established audience that not only feeds into your funnel of prospects but also promotes your products and solutions with word of mouth and more.

Action Content

Content is one of the most essential parts of any marketing strategy but the content that is based on data and provides pragmatic insight gets more attention. Nowadays the audience loves to find actionable “how-to” information for different problems. If your business domain has such venues to explore, you can benefit a lot.

Innovative Videos

You can also generate videos which address the queries and generic problems in your business sector and troubleshooting with your solutions. Your team will also be surprised to see booming engagements and sharing of those by the audience if you make them easily shareable. Remember to keep them short, relevant and interesting.

Explore Communities

Along with building your brand and expertise, you should also look for which sites your targeted audience is frequenting. Through feedback and research, you can also identify business publications or special editions of magazines, influencers in the communities and professional chat rooms for troubleshooting. Getting an audience engaged there, will be one of the most effective ways of reaching a wide spectrum of prospects.

Use Lists

Last but not the least, your team can use the lists provided by Infofree.com, where the business databases, have 95% accuracy and consumer databases approximately 90% accuracy, to use the aforementioned techniques for the best ROI (Return on Investment).

Your Advertisement Strategy

With ten months gone by, you’re looking at how to make the best use of your entrepreneurial energy. In this world of advertisement strategy blitz, it’s best to optimize and use your budget pragmatically. You have a pretty good sense of what to do or where to find your prospects. The following pointers from Infofree.com experts can lead to you optimizing your advertisement strategy.

Pinterest Pins

One of the least used to make profits is a social media outlet Pinterest. Your marketing team can start posting pins on the platform and explore Pinterest’s demographic and varied audience. Pinterest ads help people understand what your brand stands for and how it can fit into their business needs. Remember to link promoted pins to blog posts and other content that contain strong opt-in opportunities and Call-To-Action offers.

LinkedIn Leads

LinkedIn, the professional social media platform is a must during this holiday season. If you are in such a business sector, you can run an ad to a LinkedIn landing page offering a course to help improve a professional skill. On the other hand, even if you are just a business offering products, your expert commentary with an ad offer on subjects pertinent to your sector will be read and enhance your brand name and status as an expert.

Facebook Factor

Everyone in every business is on Facebook with a business page. But how you reach out to the right audience is the way to profits. Investing in custom ads to make sure Facebook brings the right audience to you, is a good start. Remember that anyone who reaches your business page on Facebook is a strong prospect. There your team can provide an irresistible opt-in and/or Call-To-Action (CTA) to connect with visiting prospects.

Quora Questions

Quora, a unique social media platform for asking and answering questions, also allows ads. It allows you to create original ads, specific to your business sector. Thus, your marketing team targets users by interest, geography, and other factors. Also, Quora ads show up under the main question as it is a Q-A platform. Your experts will do well for your enterprise if they answer relevant questions raised in your field of expertise thus putting you as a trusted expert in the sector. Another factor in favor is that you can use your smallest budget for these ads as these are only available on an auction basis, meaning you have to specify a bid value thus very low budgets also benefit.

Tweaking Tweets

With Twitter offering simple promotional ads, a small budget on this fast moving social media platform is a good idea. Depending on your budget, you can use ads on Twitter to promote your punchline tweets about your product and solutions, your scheduled webinars and your expertise laden content in blogs.

Billboard Buzz

Using billboards or large signs at busy intersections to pull leads is not the domain of big businesses. During holiday season people do travel especially by roads so signs near a nowhere land catch more eyes of the passing traffic than in a crowded junction in the city. Depending on your business sector, this is one option worth exploring for your advertisement strategy. In the billboard strategy, remember to prominently display contact information and keep the colors in such a way that readability is excellent.

Right Referrals

People love to refer friends, relatives, and business associates if there is an offer which promises something of value in return. The chances of a person connecting through a friendly referral are higher than an unknown offer coming their way. Your team can design ads and post them on your storefront, on your websites and your special landing pages to give your loyal customers and others an opportunity to not only get a surprise holiday gift from you but also to push your cause further.

Holiday Marketing in Lead Generation

The holiday season brings to mind decorations, family, friends and much more. But recently the holidays have evolved into a billion dollar industry and it’s time to imagine opportunities within. To engage your leads and prospects in a warm, festive marketing environment the following helpful guidelines can be considered:

Mindset

First and foremost, your marketing team will need to get an understanding of the mindset of your audience. With different businesses, this changes dramatically but remember the holidays are that time of each year when your team can show the fun side and enjoy it with your audience. Better you understand your audience, better will be the interaction.

Surprise

The element of surprise is essential and can be incorporated in content, offers, and Calls to Action (CTA). A surprise gift, offer or just a zombie-fever theme can attract attention. Expect the unexpected is the expression that should guide your audience to open your business windows of interaction with them.

Silly

This is the time of the year when your marketing team members can bring out the silliest ideas out and get away with them. Packaging those ideas in a creative way brings out the laughter and some of those are set to go viral through your audience.

Tradition

Tradition is paramount in the holiday environment and it’s a good idea to ask your audience about their plans. People love to share their images of the decorations and other stuff they are indulging in. Depending on your business sector, you will collect a wealth of resources to share on social media and other platforms and the audience will flock to watch their own stuff and more.

Spectacular

If your business sector deals with products or services, where your team can safely incorporate festive bits, you are in luck and take full advantage of it. But if your sector has nothing to do with the holidays, it’s profitable to get innovative and find effective ways to use holiday marketing engagements. Your social media and other platforms can also be effective windows to share those on.

Tweak It

There is still a lot of buzz that can be generated by even simply tweaking holiday elements to your branding. On your social media platforms, your team can change the profile photos or other noticeable characteristics to holiday themes.

Your marketing team is striving to generate high-quality leads and has worked on excellent content of your lead generating strategy. Now to remember landing page is an essential factor to provide a successful outcome.

Using lists provided by Infofree.com, where the business databases, have 95% accuracy and consumer databases approximately 90% accuracy, your team is ready to take control of the strategy.

Before your team starts welcoming visitors, check your landing page for the call to action (CTA) offers you provide. Stressing the importance of the landing page in the marketing strategy, our experts have made a list of guidelines for your team to follow:

Forms Short and Concise

It is a fact that without optimized, short and concise forms, there will not be any lead generation. The forms should be clearly worded and must have some essentials like a headline for the offer. Your “submit the form button” also can be turned towards your offer like “Free Trial.” Short and concise information seeking forms are definitely filled more often. Provide security aspect of the submission so the visitor is assured of data privacy and security. Make sure the data you are asking is essential to further your equation with the prospect and its relevance to your business field.

Easy Navigation

Undivided attention from the visitor on your landing page requires no other offers to distract them. As much as you want to attract the visitor to some more links or offer to visit your other pages, the bottom line is: there should be no navigational distractions from your landing page.

Consistent Transparency

From the very start to the end, you must maintain complete transparency and consistency in your language and offers. Make sure that nowhere there should be words like Free and then at a later stage, an amount of money – however small – is asked for. Similarly, a download if offered, must not stop – asking for more information or money.

Enhance Value Points

Use bullet points to enhance the value of your offer and how your products are aimed at your visitors. Make the visitor feel that they are getting much more than they bargained for while signing up on your forms.

Social Media Platforms

Your landing page must have social media links. Usually in the form of buttons so that they can be clicked and the visitors can share. Place the buttons at the end/bottom of the page and an email link.

Attractive Layout

Overall, the landing page should have an aesthetically appealing layout and shouldn’t be risky looking. Also, combine the fonts, content language, and pictures to give a welcoming appearance to the landing page. Smart short headlines and clear-cut defined offers are a must.

Multiple Landings

There is no harm in having multiple landing pages with various offers. Depending on the type of business field; display the same offers on different landing pages, to increase traffic. Remember to keep all landing pages independent and free from connectivity among them.